Try Not to Breathe by Jennifer R. Hubbard Page A

able to relax or think about anything else until I got this over with.
    I stuck my hand in and rubbed the pink fabric of the sweater. It had been soft the first time I touched it, but it was rough now, as if I could feel every fiber and thread.
    The roughness jolted me out of whatever trance I’d been in. I wrapped up the sweater and thrust it back on the shelf, pissed that I’d gotten sucked into touching it again. Guilt like concrete filled my stomach, my chest, even the inside of my head.

EIGHT
    That night my father came home for dinner. He was a salesman, but not the kind that knocks on doors or works in a store. He sold industrial equipment to factories. His passport had stamps from all over the world. When I was little, I made myself a passport like his, with hand-drawn stamps from made-up places. I didn’t realize until I was in second grade that not everyone did this, that the other kids thought it was strange to play with fake passports and old baggage-claim stickers.
    Dad kept promising to take me with him, but whenever I asked about a specific trip, he’d say, “I’m booked solid with meetings. I wouldn’t have any time for you.” I’d told him I could sightsee on my own—I saw myself running through the streets of foreign cities, bouncing along in a river of languages I didn’t understand, free—but neither of my parents liked that idea.
    When we all sat down to eat, my mother gave me a quivery smile, so I guessed I was forgiven for breaking the vase earlier. She divided her fish into equal sections, never letting it touch her carrots or green beans.
    “There’s a game on tonight,” Dad told me. “Want to watch?”
    “Okay.” I never knew if he did these father-son nights out of obligation or because he wanted to, but I didn’t mind. It wasn’t like I had other plans.
    Mom went upstairs to watch something else because she said baseball was maddeningly slow, and we settled on the living-room couch. The way baseball announcers talk is very relaxing. It’s like they have nothing to do with the rest of their lives besides watch whatever game is in front of them. Not that I listened to every word. I just liked the sound of it, the stream of facts and numbers and stats and names. It pushed everything else out of my mind.
    “Your mother mentioned that you want to start running again,” Dad said during a commercial.
    “Oh—yeah—I did say that.”
    He paused before he spoke again. For the past few months, he always seemed to digest my words, weigh and analyze them. Or maybe he was weighing his own words, trying not to set me off on another trip to Crazytown. “Don’t forget, the treadmill is downstairs, anytime you want to use it.”
    “I know. But I want to try the trails around here.” The treadmill had become my mother’s thing. I no longer wanted to run indoors. I’d been walled in, cushioned, since coming out of Patterson, and now I wanted to push myself again. To find the edges of things.
    “Good for you,” Dad said, a little too heartily. I wondered if either of my parents would ever completely relax around me again.
    • • • • •

    I had come home from Patterson to this house; the contractors had finished sealing it up while I was in the hospital. I would never go back to the house with the garage, or the room where my parents had found pills under my bed.
    My bed looked strange, my computer and desk as if they belonged to someone I’d known years ago. The first thing I did was hang up Val’s painting, and then I felt a little better. Mom hovered, frowning. “What’s that? Did you paint that? Oh, Val did? Isn’t that . . . interesting. Do you want anything to eat? Or drink? I have some fruit, and crackers—I could make you a sandwich—do you need to take a nap?”
    “I thought I would take a walk,” I said, itching to be outside, with no walls or fences.
    “A walk? Where?”
    “Out in the woods.”
    “Alone? A walk to where? Why?”
    “Just around. To get some